Chapter 9
The parking attendant didn't ask why I was leaving early. He just lifted the gate and waved me through, and I pulled out onto County Road 9 with the diaper bag on the passenger seat unzipped just enough that I could see the glint of the locket inside.
My hands were shaking on the wheel. I gripped it tighter and tried to breathe the way the nurse had taught me when my daughter was colicky — in through the nose, out slow, count to four.
County Road 9 was empty that late. The gala lights fell away behind me and the road went dark except for the yellow wash from the diner on the corner of 9 and Miller. The neon OPEN sign buzzed in the window, and next to it the gas station's pumps glowed under the canopy. I passed both without stopping, and the smell of fried oil and gasoline cut through the vents even with the windows up.
It hit me right there between the diner and the pump island.
I was maybe nine. Mom had picked me up from Sunday service at Grace Community. The parking lot was half-empty, asphalt hot from August. She wore that same locket that day. I remembered because I'd asked to hold it while we waited for the car to cool and she'd let me, and it was warm from her skin. She'd tucked her reddish hair behind her ear — the same hair I had now — and said, "This was your grandmother's. You'll wear it someday when you're grown." She hadn't been dressed up then, just a plain navy dress and flat shoes, but the locket had made her look different. Worth something. Anchored.
I hadn't thought about that afternoon in years. Now it sat in my diaper bag on a county road at ten-thirty at night with my daughter breathing in the back seat.
In the rearview, I watched her eyelids flutter. She'd cried hard in the ballroom and then gone quiet when I got her into the car seat, her little hands fisted around the strap. I sang under my breath, nothing really, just a hum, and kept my eyes on the road so I wouldn't stare. After a mile, her head tipped to the side. Her breathing evened out. Asleep.
At the stoplight by the old feed store, I put the car in park for a second and steadied myself. My chest was still tight. I reached over to the diaper bag and lifted the locket out. I didn't open it. I just turned on the dome light and held it under the pale glow.
The engraving caught first. Ornate filigree, fine loops and leaves pressed into the gold, worn smooth in one corner where a thumb would have rubbed it over years. Not costume. Not new. I ran my fingertip over it and felt the shallow grooves. My mother's thumb had worn that same corner down. I knew that texture.
I clicked it open. The hinge was small and stiff. Inside, that tiny color portrait stared up at me. I'd seen it in flashes all night under chandeliers and phone screens, but not like this — still, close, under a steady light with my daughter asleep behind me.
It was her. My mom at maybe twenty-eight. The wavy reddish hair, the line of her mouth when she was trying not to smile for a photo. She was about my age now. The same age I was holding this locket on County Road 9 in a champagne dress that didn't belong to this road at all.
It wasn't abstract anymore. Not "provenance" or "heirloom status" the way the man in the tuxedo had said it. It was my mom. On a Sunday in a hot parking lot telling me I'd wear it someday. And someone else had tried to step on me to keep it buried under a magenta gown and a clutch.
My eyes filled and I let them. I didn't wipe them right away. I sat there with the dome light on and the locket warm in my palm and my daughter's soft breath filling the car until the light behind me honked.
I drove the rest of the way home slow.
Our apartment was on the second floor above the laundromat on Elm. I carried her up still asleep in the car seat and then lifted her out, her body heavy and limp against my shoulder. The slip dress rustled. I laid her in her crib in the little bedroom, took off her cardigan carefully so she wouldn't wake, and stood with my hand on her back until I was sure she was under.
In the kitchen, I washed my hands. Then I cleared the table, laid down a clean white dish towel, and set the locket in the center.
I thought about taking photos at the gala, under those chandeliers with people watching. That would have been rushing it. Evidence for them, not for me.
This was for me.
I propped my phone against a mug, hit video, and talked low so I wouldn't wake her.
"This is September fourteenth," I whispered. "This is my mother's locket. Gold oval, filigree engraving, portrait inside. It was my grandmother's before her. I am recording this at home."
I turned it over slowly under the kitchen light, opened and closed the hinge, let the camera catch the worn corner, the portrait, the back. I didn't add anything else. No accusations. Just what it was.
May you like
When I stopped the recording, I saved it twice — once to my phone, once to the hard drive I kept in the closet — off any cloud. The locket stayed on the towel where I could see it from the crib doorway.
I sat on the edge of my bed in that dress, pumps kicked off, and listened to my daughter breathe.
